Winning in automation requires a focus on humans

Although corporate adoption of automation technology is becoming more widespread, success remains elusive. Three-quarters of respondents in a 2018 McKinsey global survey say their companies have begun to automate some business processes or plan to do so within the next year. Yet many find total returns have fallen short of their expected target. Our client work indicates there are two main reasons for this. First, too many organizations fail to consider how automating certain steps in a business or customer-facing process will affect upstream or downstream handoffs and connections, which can introduce new inefficiencies, capping the value delivered by automation.